Wimbledon 2022: The history and the ambience endure, but records will continue to fall

Grass winners, ranking milestones, juniors and seniors—some names and numbers

Sunday 26 June 2022, 20:25 UK

Serena Williams (Photo: AELTC/Florian Eisele)

It began 145 years ago, the oldest tennis Major, and this year Wimbledon is marking the 135th men’s edition, the 128th women’s event—and the 54th for both in the Open era.

And because it is 100 years since the All England Club moved to Church Road, the tournament will also mark the centenary of its famed Centre Court.

The gates open shortly to a full complement of visitors for the first time since 2019, and they will be greeted, as have the millions before them, to a picture perfect tennis backdrop.

The pristine grass is mown, measured and watered. The ground-staff have fine-tuned the rituals of line-painting, net-raising and, just in case, court covering.

Banks of flowers fill with walkways, baskets drape from every available overhang—all in perfect white, purple and green co-ordination—and the signs pronouncing ‘wet varnish’ on the gleaming wood will soon be removed.

The men and women who will battle and will entertain for the next fortnight have practised, rested, completed media and sponsor duties, and settled into their locker rooms with nothing but white kit waiting for their opening matches.

The Queue is back, too, after two years away courtesy of the Covid pandemic, and there will not be an empty seat on any court once “Play” is spoken by the residing umpires.

And so it begins, the pursuit of wins, of records, of days in the spotlight, or of early flights home with the long wait until tennis returns to its natural grassy roots.

Here as a taster, then, are some of the records already set, and the names of some who may take their own place among them.

What better place to start that the top seed and defending champion Novak Djokovic, who will attempt to win his seventh Wimbledon title, and his fourth in a row.

Second seed and two-time champion Rafael Nadal is attempting to extend his record number of Majors to 23, and thus equal Serena Williams’ Open record.

Williams, who has not played since retiring injured here a year ago, returns as a wild card to try and equal the all-time Major record of Margaret Court, 24. It could be her eighth Wimbledon title, tying Roger Federer’s record, though the Swiss will miss the tournament for the first time in 22 years. He too last played here a year ago.

This year will mark the first Wimbledon since the introduction of formal rankings in 1973 that the world Nos 1 and 2 are absent, Russian Daniil Medvedev and injured Alexander Zverev. It will also be without its women’s defending champion, Ash Barty, who retired this spring.

However, the new No1 woman, Iga Swiatek, arrives with a 35-match winning streak, the longest since 2000: Two more wins will take her back to the 37-streak of Martina Hingis in 1997. And if she wins the title, it will be her seventh in a row dating back to the Doha 1000 and including Roland Garros.

As an aside, though, one of the giants of Wimbledon history, Martina Navratilova, won 74 in a row in 1984—and had additional streaks of 58, 54, 41, 37 and 36. And no-one has yet matched her nine singles titles [plus 11 doubles titles].

Navratilova won her last singles match at Wimbledon in 2004 and retired two years later at almost 50 years old. The following players may be inspired, but few will match her extraordinary legacy.

2022 grass winners in Wimbledon draw

· ATP250 ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Tim van Rijthoven

· ATP250 Stuttgart, Matteo Berrettini beat Andy Murray

· WTA250 Nottingham, Beatriz Haddad Maia beat Alison Riske

· WTA500 Berlin, Ons Jabeur beat Belinda Bencic

· ATP500 Halle, Hubert Hurkacz

· ATP500 Queen’s, Matteo Berrettini beat Filip Krajinovic

· WTA250 Birmingham, Beatriz Haddad Maia beat Zhang Shuai

· ATP250 Mallorca, Stefanos Tsitsipas beat Roberto Bautista Agut

· WTA500 Eastbourne, Petra Kvitova beat Jelena Ostapenko

· ATP250 Eastbourne, Taylor Fritz beat Maxime Cressy

· WTA250 Bad Homburg, Caroline Garcia beat Bianca Andreescu

· Four of the women’s top-10 seeds have won a grass title during their careers: Jabeur, Garbine Muguruza, Anett Kontaveit, and Karolina Pliskova.

· Five of the men’s top-10 seeds have also won grass titles: Djokovic, Nadal, Tsitsipas, Hurkacz and Berrettini

Former Wimbledon champions in the draws

Serena Williams (7), Kvitova (2), Muguruza (1), Angelique Kerber (1), Simona Halep (1)

Djokovic (6), Nadal (2), Murray (2)

Most grass titles in Open era

Federer has 19, but the highest tally by a man in this year’s draw is Murray on 8.

On the women’s side, Margaret Court has 46, but the highest tally by a woman in this year’s draw is Williams, on 7.

Age is no barrier

This year’s Wimbledon has 30 women in the singles draw who are aged over 30, the oldest being Serena Williams (40). She also happens to be the oldest woman in the Open Era to win a Major singles title, most recently the 2017 Australian Open.

Also close to age 41, Feliciano Lopez is the oldest man to start in the men’s draw this year, and the oldest since 1975.

There are seven teenagers in this year’s women’s singles draw, the youngest being Coco Gauff (18). While 19 year-old Carlos Alcaraz is the youngest man in the main draw, one of just two teenagers alongside Holger Rune who is only six days older than Alcaraz.

Former girls’ singles champions in the 2022 Wimbledon field are: Kristen Flipkens (2003), Bencic (2013), Ostapenko (2014), Claire Liu (2017) and Swiatek (2018).

Six former Wimbledon boys’ singles champions are in the main draw: Grigor Dimitrov (2008), Marton Fucsovics (2010), Reilly Opelka (2015), Denis Shapovalov (2016), Alejandro Davidovich Fokina (2017) and Tseng Chun-Hsin (2018).

Only four of the 70 different Wimbledon boys’ champions have gone on to win the men’s title, the only active one being Federer. And only four women have done so—but with the retirement of Barty, none are currently active.